My first impression of Drive Genius 2 was very good. I had used the first generation of Drive Genius and the new version has a much better interface that just sort of floats across your screen allowing many more choices.

My first move was to create a bootable DVD, which Drive Genius 2 allows you to do. Rather than read the directions, I created the DVD in Toast. (Mistake!) Then after the DVD wouldn't boot, I read the directions and created the boot DVD using the Burn feature in Apple's Disk Utility. It booted just as expected and in about a minute and a half.

I proceeded to check the integrity of my Mac and then defragmented my hard drive. At this point I had not done a backup, so that's all I chose to do. Then I did a backup so I could try other tests.

The next thing I had wanted to do was to partition my hard drive on the fly. In other words, I didn't want to have to completely erase and reformat my hard drive to gain a partition like you normally have to do if you want more than one partition. I had always used Apple's Disk Utility to do any partitioning, but this time I selected the partition option in Drive Genius 2 and checked for options. If you attempt to select "Repartition" from the choices while you're running Drive Genius 2 from the computer you booted from, you will not be able to select your internal hard drive for any of the things you can do with Drive Genius 2. That's a really good safety feature. Once you boot from the Drive Genius DVD, you can work with your internal hard drive.

Without getting into too much detail, Drive Genius 2 allowed me to add and remove partitions without losing any data. The interface is very intuitive, so most would not have any trouble doing partitioning.

In the middle of doing this review, Drive Genius version 2.1 came out. They had added a tool to their arsenal called Drive Slim. This was very impressive. I worked with my wife's laptop and booted it in Target Disk mode and it showed up on the desktop of my Mac Pro. (Not having a Boot DVD with Drive Slim on it, I was forced to use this method.) Using Drive Slim, I was able to find hundreds of files that I could eliminate including duplicates, localizations (foreign language options), and cache files. So the point of Drive Slim is to free up hard disk space by eliminating unused and unnecessary files. Note - You have the option of archiving everything instead of deleting it.

One of the problems I had with the hard drive in the laptop was directory damage. In desktop Macs, this is a VERY common problem after a power failure. Your power goes out and suddenly, your Mac won't boot! I've had to make this repair several times on Macs in our house. Drive Genius 2 has a repair feature that allows you to verify the directory information and make repairs and completely rebuild it if necessary. This one feature can save the day if you are having problems booting your Mac to start with. Thus, the DVD or at least a backup drive with Drive Genius 2 on it is essential.

I would say the MOST useful tool in Drive Genius 2 is the Defragment tool. If you've never defragmented your hard drive, you may be surprised by the boost in performance. And if you've never done it before, you'll be there defragmenting for as much as 24 hours, so don't start defragmenting unless you can spare the use of the computer for a while. Once you've done the initial defrag, it takes much less time when you do it again. I try to defragment my hard drives about once a month, but I back up everything once a week.

So here is a list of the tools in Drive Genius 2:

1. Information - Includes things like name. size, used space, available space.
2. Defrag - For defragmentation of hard drives.
3. Drive Slim - For freeing up hard drive space
4. Repair - When your hard drive has problems.
5. Benchtest - So that you can compare performance against other models of Mac.
6. Scan - Allows you to check for bad blocks on your hard drive.
7. Integrity Check - To check the integrity of the hard drive and any hardware connected.
8. Initialize - This is to erase a drive and create a new HSF+ volumn.
9. Repartition - Create, expand, and remove partitions on your hard drive.
10. Duplicate - To duplicate a hard drive to an external device or disk image.
11. Shred - You have several choices on shredding individual files or hard drives.
12. Sector Edit - Write directly to sectors of the hard drive.

While I may use only 3/4 of the tools in Drive Genius 2, these tools are essential in maintaining the Macs in my household. I heartily recommend Drive Genius 2 as a "must have" utility for anyone who wants to keep their Mac in top shape!

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